The Winter King

by Bernard Cornwell

  Owain fought well. No other man could have sustained that opening, slaughterous assault. His boots slipped in the mud, and more than once he had to beat off Arthur’s attacks from his knees, but he always managed to recover his footing even if he was still driven backwards. When Owain slipped a fourth time I understood part of Arthur’s confidence. He had wanted rain to make the footing treacherous and I think he knew that Owain would be bloated and tired from a night’s feasting. Yet he could not break through that dogged guard, even though he did drive the champion clean back to the place where Wlenca’s blood was still just visible as a darker patch of soaking mud.

  And there, by the Saxon’s blood, Owain’s luck changed. Arthur slipped, and though he recovered the falter was all the opening Owain needed. He lunged whip-fast. Arthur parried, but Owain’s sword slit through the leather jerkin to draw the fight’s first blood from Arthur’s waist. Arthur parried again, then again, this time stepping back before the hard, quick lunges that would have gored an ox to its heart. Owain’s men roared their support as the champion, scenting victory, tried to throw his whole body on to Arthur to drive his lighter opponent down into the mud, but Arthur had been ready for the manoeuvre and he sidestepped on to the royal stone and gave a back-cut of his sword that slashed open the back of Owain’s skull. The wound, like all scalp wounds, bled copiously so that the blood matted in Owain’s hair and trickled down his broad back to be diluted by the rain. His men went silent.

  Arthur leaped from the stone, attacking again, and once again Owain was on the defensive. Both men were panting, both were mud-spattered and bloody, and both too tired to spit any more insults at the other. The rain made their hair hang in long, soaking hanks as Arthur cut left and right in the same fast rhythm with which he had opened the fight. It was so fast that Owain had no chance to do anything but counter the strokes. I remembered Owain’s scornful description of Arthur’s fighting style, slashing like a haymaker, Owain had said, hurrying to beat bad weather. Once, and only once, did Arthur whip his blade past Owain’s guard, but the blow was half parried, robbing it of force, and the sword was checked by the iron warrior rings in Owain’s beard. Owain threw the blade off, then tried again to drive Arthur down on to the ground with the weight of his body. Both fell and for a second it looked as though Owain would trap Arthur, but somehow Arthur scrambled away and climbed to his feet.

  Arthur waited for Owain to rise. Both men were breathing hard and for a few seconds they watched each other, judging their chances, and then Arthur moved forward into the attack again. He swung again and again, just as he had before, and again and again Owain parried the wild blows, then Arthur slipped for a second time. He called in fear as he fell, and his cry was answered by a shout of triumph as Owain drew back his arm for the killing blow. Then Owain saw that Arthur had not slipped at all, but had merely pretended it to make Owain open his guard and now it was Arthur who lunged. It was his first lunge of the battle, and his last. Owain had his back to me and I was half hiding my eyes so that I would not have to see Arthur’s death, but instead, right before me, I saw the shining tip of Hywelbane come clean out through Owain’s wet and blood-streaked back. Arthur’s lunge had gone straight through the champion’s body. Owain seemed to freeze, his sword arm suddenly powerless. Then, from nerveless fingers, his sword dropped into the mud.

  For a second, for a heartbeat, Arthur left Hywelbane in Owain’s belly, then, with a huge effort that took every muscle in his body, he twisted the blade and ripped it free. He shouted as he tore that steel out of Owain, shouted as the blade broke the flesh’s suction and ripped through bowel and muscle and skin and flesh, and still shouted as he dragged the sword out into the day’s grey light. The force needed to drag the steel from Owain’s heavy body meant that the sword kept going in a wild backswing that sprayed blood far across the mud-churned circle.

  While Owain, disbelief on his face and with his guts spilling into the mud, fell.

  Then Hywelbane thrust down once into the champion’s neck.

  And there was silence in Caer Cadarn.

  Arthur stepped back from the corpse. Then he turned sunwise to look into the faces of every man around the circle. Arthur’s own face was hard as stone. There was not a scrap of kindness there, only the face of a fighter come to triumph. It was a terrible face, his big jaw set in a rictus of hate so that those of us who only knew Arthur as a painstakingly thoughtful man were shocked by the change in him. ‘Does any man here,’ he called in a loud voice, ‘dispute the judgment?’

  None did. Rain dripped from cloaks and diluted Owain’s blood as Arthur walked to face the fallen champion’s spearmen. ‘Now’s your chance,’ he spat at them, ‘to avenge your Lord, otherwise you are mine.’ None could meet his eye, so he turned away from them, stepped over the fallen warlord and faced Tristan. ‘Does Kernow accept the judgment, Lord Prince?’

  Tristan, pale-faced, nodded. ‘It does, Lord.’

  ‘Sarhaed,’ Arthur decreed, ‘will be paid from Owain’s estate.’ He turned again to look at the warriors. ‘Who commands Owain’s men now?’

  Griffid ap Annan stepped nervously forward. ‘I do, Lord.’

  ‘You will come to me for orders in one hour. And if any man of you touches Derfel, my comrade, then all of you will burn in a fire-pit.’ They lowered their gaze rather than meet his eyes.

  Arthur used a handful of mud to clean the sword of its blood, then handed it to me. ‘Dry it well, Derfel.’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘And thank you. A good sword.’ He closed his eyes suddenly. ‘God help me,’ he said, ‘but I enjoyed that. Now’ – his eyes opened – ‘I’ve done my part, what about yours?’

  ‘Mine?’ I gaped at him.

  ‘A kitten,’ he said patiently, ‘for Sarlinna.’

  ‘I have one, Lord,’ I said.

  ‘Then fetch it,’ he said, ‘and come to the hall for breakfast. Do you have a woman?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Tell her we leave tomorrow when the council has finished its business.’

  I stared at him, hardly believing my luck. ‘You mean –’ I began.

  ‘I mean,’ he interrupted me impatiently, ‘that you will serve me now.’

  ‘Yes, Lord!’ I said. ‘Yes, Lord!’

  He picked up his sword, cloak and boots, took Sarlinna’s hand and walked away from the rival he had killed.

  And I had found my Lord.

  LUNETE DID NOT WANT to travel north to Corinium where Arthur was wintering with his men. She did not want to leave her friends and besides, she added almost as an afterthought, she was pregnant. I greeted the announcement with disbelieving silence.

  ‘You heard me,’ she snapped, ‘pregnant. I can’t go. And why should we go? We were happy here. Owain was a good lord, then you had to spoil it. So why don’t you go by yourself?’ She was squatting by our hut’s fire, trying to take what warmth she could from its feeble flames. ‘I hate you,’ she said and she vainly tried to pull our lovers’ ring from her finger.

  ‘Pregnant?’ I asked in a shocked voice.

  ‘But maybe not by you!’ Lunete screamed, then gave up trying to tug the ring off her swollen finger and hurled a billet of firewood at me instead. Our slave howled in misery at the back of the hut and Lunete threw a log at her for good measure.

  ‘But I have to go,’ I said, ‘I have to go with Arthur.’

  ‘And abandon me?’ she shrieked. ‘You want me to be a whore? Is that it?’ She hurled another piece of wood and I abandoned the fight. It was the day after Arthur’s contest with Owain and we were all back in Lindinis where the council of Dumnonia was meeting in Arthur’s villa, which was consequently surrounded by petitioners with their relatives and friends. Those eager people waited at the villa’s front gates. At the back a huddle of armouries and storehouses stood where the villa’s garden had once grown. Owain’s old war-band was waiting for me there. They had chosen the site of their ambush well, at a place where holly trees hid us from the buildings.
Lunete was still screaming at me as I walked up the path, calling me a traitor and a coward. ‘She’s got you right, Saxon,’ Griffid ap Annan said, then spat towards me.

  His men blocked my path. There were a dozen spearmen there, all old comrades, but all now with implacably hostile faces. Arthur might have placed my life under his protection, but here, hidden from the villa windows, no one would know how I had ended up dead in the mud.

  ‘You broke your oath,’ Griffid accused me.

  ‘I did not,’ I claimed.

  Minac, an old warrior whose neck and wrists were heavy with the gold given him by Owain, levelled his spear. ‘Don’t worry about your girl,’ he said nastily, ‘there’s plenty of us who know how to look after young widows.’

  I drew Hywelbane. Behind me the women had come from their huts to see their men avenge the death of their Lord. Lunete was among them and jeering at me like the rest.

  ‘We’ve taken a new oath,’ Minac said, ‘and unlike you, we keep our oaths.’ He advanced down the path with Griffid beside him. The other spearmen crowded in behind their leaders, while at my back the women pressed closer and some of them put aside their ever-present distaffs and spindles to begin throwing stones to drive me forward on to Griffid’s spear. I hefted Hywelbane, its edge still dented from Arthur’s fight with Owain, and I said a prayer that the Gods would give me a good death.

  ‘Saxon,’ Griffid said, using the worst insult he could find. He was advancing very cautiously for he knew my skill with a sword. ‘Saxon traitor,’ he said, then recoiled as a heavy stone splashed into the mud on the path between us. He looked past me and I saw the fear come on to his face and the blade of his spear drop.

  ‘Your names,’ Nimue’s voice hissed from behind me, ‘are on the stone. Griffid ap Annan, Mapon ap Ellchyd, Minac ap Caddan …’ She recited the spearmen’s names and ancestry one by one, and each time she pronounced a name she spat towards the curse stone that she had lobbed into their path. The spears dropped.

  I stood aside to let Nimue pass. She was dressed in a black hooded cloak that cast her face into a shadow out of which her golden eye glittered malevolently. She stopped beside me, then suddenly turned and pointed a staff dressed with a sprig of mistletoe towards the women who had been throwing stones. ‘You want your children turned into rats?’ Nimue called to the onlookers. ‘You want your milk to dry and your urine to burn like fire? Go!’ The women seized their children and ran to hide themselves in the huts.

  Griffid knew Nimue was Merlin’s beloved and possessed of the Druid’s power and he was shaking with fear of her curse. ‘Please,’ he said as Nimue turned back to face him.

  She walked past his lowered spear-point and struck him hard on the cheek with her staff. ‘Down,’ she said. ‘All of you! Down! Flat! On your faces! Flat!’ She struck Minac. ‘Get down!’

  They lay on their bellies in the mud and, one by one, she stepped on their backs. Her tread was light, but her curse heavy. ‘Your deaths are in my hand,’ she told them, ‘your lives are all mine. I will use your souls as gaming-pieces. Each dawn that you wake alive you will thank me for my mercy, and each dusk you will pray that I do not see your filthy faces in my dreams. Griffid ap Annan: swear allegiance to Derfel. Kiss his sword. On your knees, dog! On your knees!’

  I protested that these men owed me no allegiance, but Nimue turned on me in anger and ordered me to hold out the sword. Then, one by one, with mud and terror on their faces, my old companions shuffled on their knees to kiss the tip of Hywelbane. The oath gave me no rights of lordship over these men, but it did make it impossible for any of them to attack me without endangering their souls, for Nimue told them that if they broke this oath their souls were doomed to stay for evermore in the dark Otherworld, never to find new bodies on this green, sunlit earth again. One of the spearmen, a Christian, defied Nimue by saying the oath meant nothing, but his courage failed when she prised the golden eye from its socket and held it towards him, hissing a curse, and in abject terror he dropped to his knees and kissed my sword like the others. Nimue, once their oaths were sworn, ordered them to lie flat again. She worked the golden ball back into her eye socket and then we left them in the mud.

  Nimue laughed as we climbed out of their sight. ‘I enjoyed that!’ she said, and there was a flash of the old, childish mischief in her voice. ‘I did enjoy that! I do so hate men, Derfel.’

  ‘All men?’

  ‘Men in leather, carrying spears.’ She shuddered. ‘Not you. But the rest I hate.’ She turned and spat back down the path. ‘How the gods must laugh at little strutting men.’ She pushed back her hood to look at me. ‘Do you want Lunete to go to Corinium with you?’

  ‘I swore to protect her,’ I said unhappily, ‘and she tells me she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Does that mean you do want her company?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, meaning no.

  ‘I think you’re a fool,’ Nimue said, ‘but Lunete will do as I tell her. But I tell you, Derfel, that if you don’t leave her now, she’ll leave you in her own good time.’ She put her hand on my arm to check me. We had come close to the villa’s porch where the crowd of petitioners was waiting to see Arthur. ‘Did you know,’ Nimue asked me in a low voice, ‘that Arthur is thinking of releasing Gundleus?’

  ‘No.’ I was shocked by the news.

  ‘He is. He thinks Gundleus will keep the peace now, and he thinks Gundleus is the best man to rule Siluria. Arthur won’t release him without Tewdric’s agreement, so it won’t happen yet, but when it does, Derfel, I’ll kill Gundleus.’ She spoke with the terrible simplicity of truth and I thought how ferocity gave her a beauty that nature had denied her. She was staring across the wet, cold land towards the distant mound of Caer Cadarn. ‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘dreams of peace, but there never will be peace. Never! Britain is a cauldron, Derfel, and Arthur will stir it to horror.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said loyally.

  Nimue mocked that assertion with a grimace and then, without another word, she turned and walked back down the path towards the warriors’ huts.

  I pushed through the petitioners into the villa. Arthur glanced up as I came in, waved a casual welcome, then returned his attention to a man who was complaining that his neighbour had moved their boundary stones. Bedwin and Gereint sat at the table with Arthur, while to one side Agricola and Prince Tristan stood like guards. A number of the kingdom’s counsellors and magistrates sat on the floor, which was curiously warm thanks to the Roman way of making a space beneath that could be filled with warm smoky air from a furnace. A crack in the tiles was allowing wisps of the smoke to drift across the big chamber.

  The petitioners were seen one by one and justice was pronounced. Almost all of the cases could have been dealt with in Lindinis’s magistrates’ court that stood just a hundred paces from the villa, but many folk, especially the pagan country dwellers, reckoned that a decision given in Royal Council was more binding than a judgment made in a court established by the Romans, and so they stored their grudges and feuds until the council was conveniently close by. Arthur, representing the baby Mordred, dealt with them patiently, but he was relieved when the real business of the day could commence. That business was to dispose of the tangled ends left by the previous day’s fight. Owain’s warriors were given to Prince Gereint with Arthur’s recommendation that they be split between various troops. One of Gereint’s captains, a man called Llywarch, was appointed in Owain’s place as the new commander of the King’s guard, then a magistrate was given the task of tallying Owain’s wealth and sending to Kernow the portion that was owed in sarhaed. I noted how brusquely Arthur conducted the business, though never without giving each man present a chance to speak his mind. Such consultation could lead to interminable argument, but Arthur had the happy talent of understanding complicated matters swiftly and proposing compromises that pleased everyone. I noticed, too, how Gereint and Bedwin were content to let Arthur take the first place. Bedwin had placed all his hopes for Dumnonia’s future on Arthur
’s sword and Bedwin was thus Arthur’s strongest supporter, while Gereint, who was Uther’s nephew, could have been an opponent, but the Prince had none of his uncle’s ambition and was happy that Arthur was willing to take the responsibility of government. Dumnonia had a new King’s champion, Arthur ab Uther, and the relief in the room was palpable.

  Prince Cadwy of Isca was ordered to contribute to the sarhaed owed to Kernow. He protested against the decision, but quailed before Arthur’s anger and meekly agreed to pay one quarter of Kernow’s price. Arthur, I suspect, would have preferred to inflict a sterner punishment, but I was oath-bound not to reveal Cadwy’s part in the attack on the moor and there was no other evidence of his complicity, so Cadwy escaped a heavier judgement. Prince Tristan acknowledged Arthur’s decisions with a nod of his head.

  The next business of the day was arranging the future of our King. Mordred had been living in Owain’s household and now he needed a new home. Bedwin proposed a man named Nabur who was the chief magistrate in Durnovaria. Another counsellor immediately protested, condemning Nabur for being a Christian.

  Arthur rapped on the table to end a bitter argument before it began. ‘Is Nabur here?’ he demanded.

  A tall man stood at the back of the room. ‘I’m Nabur.’ He was clean shaven and dressed in a Roman toga. ‘Nabur ap Lwyd,’ he introduced himself formally. He was a young man with a narrow, grave face and receding hair that gave him the appearance of a bishop or a Druid.

  ‘You have children, Nabur?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Three living, Lord. Two boys and a girl. The girl is our Lord Mordred’s age.’

  ‘And is there a Druid or Bard in Durnovaria?’

  Nabur nodded. ‘Derella the Bard, Lord.’

  Arthur spoke privately with Bedwin, who nodded, then Arthur smiled at Nabur. ‘Would you take the King into your care?’